A state trooper has been placed on administrative duty after allegedly ripping out a woman’s nipple piercing after a traffic stop in Texas.

Tayler Myers, 18, and Courtney Palacios, 19, were returning home to Fort Worth after a concert in Houston on Oct. 31 when a Texas state trooper pulled them over. The trooper, identified in arrest records as Michael Tice, found a single pill in the vehicle and then placed the teens and two male friends under arrest for drug possession, NBCDFW.com reports.

Myers and Palicios, who said they were in the back seat at the time, told Tice that they knew about the pill. They were later booked at the Falls County Jail, where the trooper asked them to remove any piercings from their bodies.

“And then we told him, ‘Well, where do we go to take out our nipple rings?’” Myers said. “And he was like, ‘You are going to have to do it right here, in the open.’”

Both Myers and Palacios said they then turned away while raising their shirts to remove the piercings, with each managing to remove it from their right breast.

“But we were having trouble with the left,” Palacios told NBCDFW.com. “It was not coming out at all.”

The frustrated trooper then went to his vehicle and returned with a pair of pliers, determined to remove the piercing himself after subsequent attempts by the women didn’t work.

“He came up to me and he got really close to it, and he was just staring,” Palacios said. “He’s like, ‘I think it unscrews from the left side.’ So then, without gloves or anything — and I could see dirt under his nails, it was extremely disgusting — he gets on there and he tried to twist it and he starts shaking from trying so hard and he ends up pulling it and ripping it and it starts bleeding.”

Palacios said the trooper backed off after she screamed loudly.

“He didn’t say sorry or anything or acted like it was a big deal,” she said. “It was extremely uncomfortable and uncalled for and I don’t think he should have been anywhere near me.”

The piercing ultimately never came out and neither the trooper nor other officers offered medical help, Palacios said.

Myers, meanwhile, said a female officer used the pliers to remove her piercing while Tice was nearby.

“I feel like it’s not right, what he did, at all,” Myers told NBCDFW.com.

Myers and Palacios are now considering filing a lawsuit after contacting an attorney.

“He has violated every policy and procedure known to police work,” attorney Curtis Fortinberry told the station. “That is just absolutely mind-boggling that he would do this.”

Police also cited Myers and Palacios for having alcohol in the vehicle and Palacios was charged with possession of a fake ID. Both women said they were interviewed by Texas Rangers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, who took photographs of Palacios’ injury.